In general, an information exchange service based on social relations, such as a social network service (SNS), is provided such that information about relations among digital members is personally entered by a user or is determined by mutual negotiation among the members. In most cases, such a method primarily forms social relations using specific categories such as friend/family/coworker, and thus a procedure for determining information about a relation with a specific user at each time is required to determine a new relation formed based on a social activity.
Most users use information exchange methods such as email/chatting/phone call when performing social activities. Objects that are mainly managed using such a method are grouped and managed using an address book, and are very rarely used when performing other information exchange methods. In particular, there is a need to actively use the experience/information of members having social relations as user-centered social relation information because of better reliability in a process of collecting information required to solve the problems (needs) of a specific user using a social network service.
However, from the standpoint of a user, methods that are merely used as the means of most social activities, such as email/chatting/phone call, are managed differently from the aspect of services in reality. In order to be interoperable with services such as a social network service, it is required to have additional information about the user and to make an effort to know various items required for relations to be formed.
In order to form a user-centered social relation information required for the conventional social network service implemented as described above, information needs to be collected in compliance with a social relation formation method required by a specific service provider so that services related to the specific service provider can be provided. However, this method described above is problematic in that each service provider has its own unique information system, so the relation information, as well as repetitive information, must be newly input for each service provider.
Further, even if social relation information changes, there is no method for simultaneously changing the information in all related service providers, and thus there is a limitation in that services are provided based on different pieces of information.